Pretty Boy (247 Prince Ave., 706-850-0938, prettyboyathens.com): It was a long wait for Kenny Nguyen’s Vietnamese-with-a-twist restaurant to open. Then it was a long wait for me to get to it—sorry! Life gets in the way sometimes.
It’s inevitable, given the clientele (young Millennials, old Gen Zs) and the East Asian focus of the food, to compare it to Puma Yu’s, but they have different vibes. Pretty Boy is a little younger in its feel and its audience. If you are grumpy about sitting right next to loud young people scrolling on their phones and talking about their vacation plans, it may not be the place for you. The prices are, on the whole, lower, especially if you go for happy hour, when there are deals on food as well as drinks. It’s also a bit less polished. For example, you may end up with both Japanese and Chinese chopsticks on your table, a decision that seems meant to evoke a casual atmosphere but doesn’t quite work. Drinks are an emphasis, and ones like the Patty Pistachio (pistachio-washed vodka, shochu, Apero Iberico, lemon, palm sugar) are totally pleasant but fade quickly from memory.
Pretty Boy asks that you make reservations most nights, but you can usually snag a seat at the chef’s counter without one, and Monday is walk-ins only. Said chef’s counter sounds fancier than it is. It’s low, not high like a bar, and there’s not much of a view of what’s going on in the kitchen. The tables are a nicer experience, but you do have to put up with Resy.
When the food hits, it hits right on: playful, creative, punchy, gutsy. The coconut-braised spare ribs are a great example, brushed with a sticky, spicy, sour, sweet sauce, then broiled to caramelize the outsides before being nestled into a puddle of zingy cilantro-lime sauce. They aren’t afraid of flavor, and the way the texture goes from chewy outsides to gooey insides is a fun little journey. Similarly, the Viet Street Corn, over in the smaller plates section, is as delicious as the best elote I’ve had: absolutely buried beneath a shower of fried garlic, braised in coconut milk, with hints of chili oil. It’s got the chewiness and sweetness of the corn, crisp accents on top, tanginess and creaminess in the sauce. It is also a true mess to eat, something that is true of many dishes here.
The third major highlight is the mushroom rice paper pizza—a light, layered creation that uses egg and an aioli made with Laughing Cow cheese to balance unctuousness against the delicacy of the rice paper structure, the meaty local mushrooms and plenty of red onion, basil and garlic. One of the best things about Pretty Boy is that nearly everything on the menu is gluten-free, and a lot of it is vegetarian or vegan, yet a gluten-loving meat-eater can have a great time without noticing what’s missing. The fried imperial rolls, arriving extremely hot, use local mushrooms, tofu and glass noodles in place of pork, but they don’t feel like a copout. They’re just as oily as the meaty version would be.
More traditional dishes, like the spicy beef pho, are often less successful. The broth is too heavy on aromatics, and although the eye of round is nice, it all feels less satisfying than what you can get at many a less fancy restaurant and for a good bit less. The crunchy chicken salad—a big bowl that combines sliced papaya, pickled carrots, cabbage, scallion, mint, basil, fried shallots and pistachios, adding a sesame cracker on the side and dressing it all with plenty of nuoc cham—is totally good, but it also feels like something you could throw together at home. It’s not better than the imagined sum of its ingredients. The salmon crudo, a dish a lot of people seem to be into, goes too hard on salt for me. The fried chicken skins, an Instagrammable appetizer, are much too big a serving, even for two. By the time you’re halfway through, you’re tired of eating them.
Dessert is worth your time and in some ways shows what the restaurant does best: an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink attitude when it comes to flavors. A dragonfruit panna cotta—no longer on the menu and unfortunately served in a Mason jar—and a bright green pandan bundt cake both featured the same topping of pineapple compote and nougatine, speedrunning you through softness, crunchiness, silkiness, gooeyness, sweet, sour and faintly bitter. Do your best to scoop everything into a single bite, chomp through it and bliss out.
Pretty Boy is open for dinner 5–10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 5–11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
WHAT’S UP: Yossi Kitchen opened a small cafe inside the Prince Market at 100 Prince Ave., serving Indian plates, bowls and wraps. Redstone Market & Butcher, off Highway 129 at 2531 Brock Road, is a new market and modern take on an old country store with a hot bar and to-go meals. The Tallahassee, FL-based country bar Duke’s and Dottie’s has opened an Athens location at 346 E Broad St. Wayne Bradberry, the longtime fruit and vegetable vendor who set up on North Chase Street on the Salvation Army property, died at the beginning of February.
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